The Best Way to Visit Chichén Itzá

One of the new seven wonders of the world this massive pyramid on the Yucatan Peninsula has seen an unprecedented number of visitors in the recent years making it one of the most visited archaeological sites in Mexico, and Mexico has a lot of those.

With it’s newfound fame you will find that the site has become a tourist trap. Most of the tour buses will come around 10AM and absolutely flood the site with cargo shorts and visor hats. Not to mention the lines of stalls trying to push their tacky trinkets onto you. That being said, the site itself is quite big and there will be areas where you can have some brief alone time. But all those places are far away from what you came to see, Chichén Itzá.

The best way to have the site relatively to yourself is to leave early, if you have a rental car this is no problem for you. However if you’re relying on buses, taxis, and collectivos to get around it can be a bit trickier. My first advice is to leave from either Tulum or Valladolid.

From Tulum there will be daily buses from the ADO bus station, make sure to buy the tickets in advance or online and print them out as they will sell out extremely fast, there is a second class bus available through Mayab, but if you don’t speak Spanish it can be difficult to figure out when your bus arrives.

Valladolid is the most effective way to get to Chichén Itzá early. There will be collectivos leaving as early as 7AM and you’ll arrive at the site about twenty minutes before it opens and two hours before the hordes of tourists from Cancún arrive.

There is a town near the entrance itself, Pisté, which would be a great place to leave from if you had a rental car and larger budget as there will not be any budget accommodation in the town, also Valladolid and Tulum are simply beautiful places that deserve to be seen.

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